updated 12:00 am EST, Wed November 16, 2011

HP overhauls Envy 15, 17, and 17 3D for audio

HP in one of its more surprising unveilings Wednesday night completely remade its Envy 15 and 17 notebooks. The new versions take more of their visual cues from the MacBook Pro, adopting its silver-colored metal, but put an even heavier emphasis on Beats audio processing than they did in the past. Each has six speakers and a subwoofer, even going so far as to have an oversized thumb dial for volume that both gives it finer volume control and a more iconic look.

Either system marks a revisit of HP's optional Radiance displays, which improve the color accuracy to a 72 percent gamut and resolution; the Envy 17 is also purportedly 50 percent brighter than stock. In a unique trick, they use a proximity sensor for the keyboard and will shut off the backlight if the user walks away but switch back on when near.

Both systems have relatively long claimed nine (Envy 15) and 9.5 (Envy 17) battery lives, although HP noted these were "ideal conditions" and most likely would be significantly lower in the real world. Expansion includes both DisplayPort and HDMI video out that can hook up as many as three external displays.

The Envy 15 starts the line at $1,100 with a 2.4GHz Core i5, 6GB of RAM, a 500GB, 7,200RPM hard drive, a slot-loading DVD burner, dedicated AMD Radeon mobile graphics of an unknown model, and an eight-cell, 1,000-cycle battery that shouldn't wear down quickly. Stepping to the $1,250 Envy 17 gets both the expected larger, 1080p Radiance screen as well as a bigger 750GB hard drive. An Envy 17 3D at $1,600 brings the expected 120Hz 3D Radiance display, a pair of active shutter 3D glasses, 8GB of RAM, and a Blu-ray drive. Buyers can pick as much as a quad Core i7, and the Envy 17 has the option of a 128GB SSD boot drive on top of as many as two 1TB rotating drives.

Like the Folio 13, the new Envy notebooks will be ready to order on December 7.

Interesting

It's interesting to see how much Apple has influenced the industry. Everyone is doing metal bodied laptops now. This is a good looking laptop, with the exception of the back of the screen. Curious to see if that's black metal or plastic.

Beats?

Six speakers plus subwoofer

So, will this have the same effect as those people who load up their 1999 Dodge Neon with a bunch of speakers and as they pull up next to you at a traffic light all you can hear is the muffled sound of music and the sound of rattling plastic from the car that cannot handle the vibration?

lawsuit coming

Didn't Apple successfully sue a Chinese company a while back that made a machine that looked exactly like an iMac? Why wouldn't this be the same case? Oh, wait, the back is black. Completely different...

Radiance Display

The reintroduction of the radiance display alone makes this laptop well worth the price of admission. Apple pissed off a lot of creatives when it announced the glossy screens. Ever try to use one during the day? Complete nightmare. And calibrating is a b****.